With the LORD is Kindness and Plenteous Redemption"

Today's Mass Readings

The first readings for yesterday, today, and tomorrow, are all taken from the Book of Jonah, and they go together nicely. Jonah is given a message from God to preach to the Assyrians in their capital city Nineveh. The Assyrians were the fiercest enemies of the ancient Israelites, in many ways even worse than the Babylonians. It may be for this reason that the Book of Judith envisions King Nebuchadnezzar as the king of the Assyrians in the Assyrian capital city of Nineveh, when everyone at that time would have clearly known that King Nebuchadnezzar actually was the king of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar was the most infamous king named in the Old Testament, but the Assyrians, not the Babylonians, were the most infamous people named in the Old Testament. In a sense, the Book of Judith is allegorizingn to portray the worst king of the worst empire. Many people have interpreted Jonah’s reticence to preach to the Assyrians as fear, on account of the Assyrian’s ferocity. There are accounts of the Assyrians impaling enemies and even skinning them alive. It clearly isn’t the fear of death, however, that inhibits Jonah from preaching to the Assyrians, since Jonah has himself thrown overboard into the sea which would have meant his own death, if God had not rescued him. Jonah did not want the Assyrians to repent and be spared of God’s wrath. This is clarified in tomorrow’s passage, when he is upset with God for not punishing the Assyrians. As a prophet of God, Jonah probably knows that the Assyrians will one day bring 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel into exile, never to be heard from again to this very day.

Jonah, however, does not understand God’s wrath. God is not a human that He should get angry like a human. Terms like “wrath” in the Bible, when referring to God, are used because they are relational terms. We see, especially in today’s first reading, that there is a redemptive function to all of God’s judgments. What may be expressed by language such as punishments, and what may sometimes even seem like punishments, we learn as we read the Bible in context, are really consequences that God uses to teach, and more importantly, to spiritually heal. In today’s passage, God’s “wrath” is stilled because the Assyrians repent; they turn to the one true God and do penance for their sins. God desires hearts to be turned to Him, He does not desire destruction. What Jonah was asked to do was like asking someone in 1940 to march into Berlin and preach repentance to the Nazis and to Hitler. A daunting task. In the end, Jonah was faithful even if he was upset with God.

Let us too, walk with the eyes of faith, and trust God, even when, like Jonah, we have strong emotional barriers that hinder us from following where God wants us to follow.